DSpace community: 淡江出版期刊

Reused Smartphones Pricing Analysis — A Duopoly Model Analysis with respect to Apple and Samsung Smartphones

title: Reused Smartphones Pricing Analysis — A Duopoly Model Analysis with respect to Apple and Samsung Smartphones abstract: As technology advances, multi-touch smartphones have rapidly become a necessity in the daily lives of most users. In order to expand their market share and attract new users, new generations of smartphones are being introduced in a much shorter interval. As a result, older phones are discarded in greater speed, and thus creating more electronic waste each year. To reduce waste material, the concept of reused smartphones is proposed. In order to attract users to purchase these reused smartphones, this study aims to look into the pricing strategy for Apple and Samsung products as both are top smartphone brands with the highest market shares. Under the duopoly environment, this study uses the Cournot game model to determine the optimal solution in a price competition with Apple set to be the leader and Samsung the “follower”. While making pricing strategies, manufacturers commonly strive to maximize their profits. Two pricing functions will have a point of intersection, and the solution will be the optimal equilibrium. The model proposed in this study may be taken as reference for manufacturers to understand the reused smartphone market.

Effects of Paid Parental Leave Allowance on Labor Market Outcomes in Taiwan

title: Effects of Paid Parental Leave Allowance on Labor Market Outcomes in Taiwan abstract: In this article we tried to understand the effect of the enforcement of the amendment to the EIA compound with parental/maternity benefits on labor market outcomes in Taiwan. This article provides a new view, which differs from previous studies in Taiwan (Zveglich Jr. and Rodgers [23]; Lai and Masters [12]; Lai [11]) to explain the effect of parental / maternity benefits. We found that the legislation that has guaranteed paid parental leave to workers (viz., the amendment to the EIA) has shown varied effects on the labor market outcomes in Taiwan. The variance was largely attributed to firms’ compliance rate, which was typically dependent on the size of the firms. We noticed that the firms have either complied more or complied less or in the worst case not at all complied with the provisions of the amended EIA. Consequently their effects on labor market outcomes have been diverse and varying. For example, the large firms had longer working hours with higher wages on the one hand, and offered lesser employment opportunities to female workers with high fertility rates compared to other female workers on the other hand. Employers in most of the cases were found to have kept the roles vacant, and haven’t needed many female workers on roll per se. Whereas in those firms that are large in size, the female workers were found to have worked for relatively longer hours and were initially paid higher wages. evertheless, the female workers in large firms have started receiving lower wages with time. We also found that the full-time workers in general have sensed a stronger effect of the legislation on working hours in comparison to the sample of both full-time and part-time workers.

Do the Corporate Performance and Default Risk Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility in China?

title: Do the Corporate Performance and Default Risk Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility in China? abstract: This study mainly discusses the impact of the corporate performance and default risk on corporate social responsibility in China from December 2008 to August 2014. The results showed that the return on equity and return on asset have positively significant influences on corporate social responsibility which is four composing indicators. Moreover, the corporate performance and default risk are positive effect on the corporate social responsibility when the company is central enterprise.

Key Factors to Affect the Adoption of Mobile Banking in the Philippines

title: Key Factors to Affect the Adoption of Mobile Banking in the Philippines abstract: The rapid development of internet and popularization of mobile phones has stimulated the banking and financial sectors towards encouraging customers to use mobile banking. This paper examines empirically the factors that affect the adoption of mobile banking in the Philippines. Data were collected from 421 Filipino using online questionnaires. This study uses factor analysis and multiple regressions to analyze the factors that affect the behavioral intention to adopt Mobile Banking in the Philippines. The results revealed that perceived attitude and perceived behavioral control were key dimensions that affect the behavioral intention to adopt Mobile Banking. In particular, relative advantage, compatibility, observability, and trialability, were found to affect attitude factor. In addition, self-efficacy, technology support and government support were similarly ascertained to affect perceived behavioral control factor. The results of this study will have useful implications for banking industry in the Philippines.

Exploring the Relationship among Hedonic Shopping Motivation, Impulse Buying, Post-Purchase Regret, and Coping

title: Exploring the Relationship among Hedonic Shopping Motivation, Impulse Buying, Post-Purchase Regret, and Coping abstract: Hedonic shopping motivation often results in impulse buying, and the outcome or the process of impulse buying may results in post-purchase regret and consequently coping to deal with the regret. However, is it possible that when a consumer engages in hedonic shopping motivation, s/he has “prepared” to face the consequence to consider coping, even before impulse buying? Using structural equation modeling (SEM), a total of 310 valid questionnaires were collected to test the initial model of hedonic shopping motivation towards impulse buying, with direct path toward coping, and indirect path mediated by post-purchase regret. Based on the Modification Index, additional path from hedonic shopping motivation toward coping was added and re-analyzed, resulting in better fit. All research hypotheses were supported.

Simulated Annealing for the Blood Pickup Routing Problem

title: Simulated Annealing for the Blood Pickup Routing Problem abstract: Blood service operation is a key component of healthcare systems all over the world. Transporting time-sensitive products like blood presents a specific and unique challenge, as such perishable products have a spoilage time before which they must be used to avoid deterioration. Therefore, if the spoilage time is exceeded, then the product should be discarded. The blood pickup routing problem (BPRP) focuses on the upstream activities of blood logistics, starting from collection or pickup of blood bags at fixed donation sites and then delivering the blood bags to the blood bank. BPRP is an extension of the well-known vehicle routing problem with time windows. In BPRP, the set of vehicle routes are constructed to minimize total distance while at the same time observing time window constraints of donation sites and the spoilage time constraint of the blood. More specifically, each donation site has its time window during which a vehicle can start collecting blood bags at the site. The blood bags must be transported back to the blood bank before the bank’s closing time and the blood’s spoilage time. This study develops a mathematical programming model for BPRP. Since CPLEX can only solve the model to optimality for small instances, this study proposes a simulated annealing (SA) based heuristic approach to solve medium and large BPRP instances. We test the proposed SA heuristic on BPRP instances generated by this study. Computational results show that the proposed SA heuristic performs well on solving BPRP.

Standby System with Imperfect Coverage and Repairable Service Station

title: Standby System with Imperfect Coverage and Repairable Service Station abstract: This paper analyzes the reliability characteristics of a system with imperfect coverage in which a repairable service station is considered. Failure times of primary and standby units are assumed to follow exponential distributions. With a coverage probability c, a failed unit is immediately detected and replaced by a standby if one is available. If the failed unit is not detected, the system enters an unsafe failure state and has to be refreshed by a reboot action. When the service station breaks down, it needs repair at a repair device. We present the expression for reliability function RY (t) and mean time to system failure MT T F. Several cases are analyzed to study the effects of various parameters on the system reliability RY (t) and MT T F. We also perform the sensitivity analysis of RY (t) and MT T F with respect to system parameters. Finally, we present an application example to demonstrate the applicability of investigated model.

Two-Period Pricing Model for Walk-in Potential Consumers with Normal Distribution of the Price of Their Willing to Buy

title: Two-Period Pricing Model for Walk-in Potential Consumers with Normal Distribution of the Price of Their Willing to Buy abstract: The optimal model was mainly constructed for the products, such as real estates, amusement park, or major furniture which themselves cannot be moved or worn to reveal to other consumers in public, to explain their optimal promotional pricing strategy. The study adopted the dual sources of the diffusion power, the number of walk-in potential consumers and the price level of the product, in the extended Bass Diffusion Model. Given periods of [0, T ) and [T, T¯), T < T¯, and T¯ maybe ∞ when a firm attempts to decide price P0 within [0, T ) and price PT within [T, T¯), respectively, to achieve the goal of maximizing discounted profit in the interval [0, T¯), the characteristics of its optimal solution (P ∗ 0 , P∗ T ) at each period were rigorously derived and profoundly discussed. This two-period model pricing could be extended to an infinite multiple-period optimal pricing model to become the issue of price control. The study would further conclude that, after a new product is initialized, its price should decline with time to take advantage of it with exhausting the consumer surplus of consumers.

Reliability Evaluation of a Multicommodity Capacitated-Flow Network in Terms of Minimal Pathsets

title: Reliability Evaluation of a Multicommodity Capacitated-Flow Network in Terms of Minimal Pathsets abstract: Many real-world systems such as transportation systems, logistics/distribution systems, and manufacturing systems can be regarded as multicommodity flow networks whose arcs have independent, finite and multi-valued random capacities. Such a flow network is a multistate system with multistate components and its reliability for level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk), i.e., the probability that k different types of commodity can be transmitted from the source node to the sink node in the way that the demand level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk) is satisfied, can be computed in terms of minimal path vectors to level d (named d-MPs here). The main objective of this paper is to present a simple algorithm to generate all d-MPs of such a flow network for each level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk) in terms of minimal pathsets. Three examples are given to illustrate how all d-MPs are generated by our algorithm and then the reliability of one example is computed.

A New Approach in Multiple Attribute Decision Making using R-norm entropy and Hamming Distance Measure

title: A New Approach in Multiple Attribute Decision Making using R-norm entropy and Hamming Distance Measure abstract: The theory of intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) set is well suitable to deal with the vagueness and hesitancy. In the present communication, we have considered R-norm entropy with both uncertainty and hesitancy degree of an IF set. Using this R-norm entropy, we have solved a multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problem in which attribute values are expressed with IF values. In MADM problem, we mainly encounter with two types of problems. First is when we don’t have any information regarding attribute weights and second is when we have little information about weights, i.e., they are partially known to us. In this paper, we have considered both the cases with examples. For the first case, we have used an extension of entropy weight method to calculate the attribute weights and in second case attribute weights are calculated by using the minimum entropy principle method which is based on solving a linear programming model. The two methods are effectively explained by taking real life examples. Also the two examples are calculated by using the TOPSIS method suggested by Chen and Tsao and shown that the outputs of both the methods coincide.

Stationary Queue Length Distribution for a Discrete-Time Preemptive Priority Queue

title: Stationary Queue Length Distribution for a Discrete-Time Preemptive Priority Queue abstract: This paper considers a discrete-time Geo/Geo/1 preemptive priority queue with two classes of customers. The queue system can be modeled by a quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) process with infinitely many phases. For the QBD process, we obtain explicit form of the joint stationary distribution and then we also get the stationary queue length distribution for lower-priority customers.

Green Performance Assessment for Retail Industry in Taiwan

title: Green Performance Assessment for Retail Industry in Taiwan abstract: The retail industry in Taiwan plays an important role in people’s lives and influences consumers’ purchasing behavior. Due to global warming and the depletion of energy and other resources, most retailers are required to obey the green policy of reuse, recycling, and reduction in their operational process, service, and products. Therefore, we first evaluated the environmental performance of retailers using selected green criteria. Then, we assessed the performance of sustainable environmental practices among ten selected retailers using grey relation analysis and the entropy method to derive objective weights for the selected criteria. Next, for continuous improvement of retailers’ green performance, we extracted and summarized a self-assessment checklist selected from the questionnaire. Retailers can use the checklist for guidelines for continuous improvement.

Interpreting Weights in Multiple Criteria Decision Making

title: Interpreting Weights in Multiple Criteria Decision Making abstract: Many decision making problems of business and management are formulated in terms of Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM): given a set of alternatives evaluated with multiple criteria, find the alternative which according to the Decision Maker (DM), has the most preferred combination of criteria values (attributes), or rank alternatives from the most preferred one to the least preferred one. The MADM methods incorporate mechanisms of building preference models based on information obtained from the DM. In a wide variety of such methods, the DM is supposed to provide information in terms of weights of criteria, usually understood as criteria’s priorities. These weights serve as parameters of the method-pecific preference models. The DM can define weights directly, or by using special weight elicitation techniques such as AHP, MAVT and others. Our concerns are that when using weight-based methods, the DM cannot ensure the correctness of the preference model. First, different weight-based methods use different kinds of preference models, which prioritize criteria based on weights in different manners. Second, interpretation of weights in some MADM methods is far from intuitive. Thus, a situation may occur when an inexperienced DM thinks of weights differently than they actually work in the method, and expresses the preference information incorrectly. In this paper we demonstrate the differences between how weights are interpreted in several methods: simple additive weighting, TOPSIS, VIKOR and PROMETHEE. We do it by comparing rankings produced with methods based on randomly generated data. We demonstrate that differences of interpreting weights significantly contribute to differences in produced rankings. A solution to this problem could be twofold: first, increasing awareness of differences between method-specific weight-based prioritizing mechanisms, and second, providing interpretations of weights for popular methods in the language understandable by the DMs.

The Problem of Distribution of Park-and-Ride Car Parks in Warsaw

title: The Problem of Distribution of Park-and-Ride Car Parks in Warsaw abstract: The development of cities and agglomerations brings new problems to be solved. One of them is the excessive road traffic and the related air pollution. Heavy traffic causes ongestions and thus increases the pollution level, because one of the most significant sources of air pollution are car exhaust gases. It is known that the public transport produces less pollution per one passenger then the private one. On the basis of this fact the idea of the Park-and-Ride (P&R or P+R) was developed, where commuters travel to the borders of the city by their cars and from there they continue their trip by public transportation. In this work, we will concentrate on finding the best localizations for P&R points. Our approach is composed of two steps. In the first step, a number of communication hubs is selected where P&R can be located (feasibility analysis). In the second ste a subset of hubs is chosen to actually have P&R points built (commuters’ convenience analysis). We solve the P&R location problem on the first step using some aspects of the Hub and Spoke method by applying a specialized evolutionary algorithm. As the problem of the second step is rather small, we propose to have it solved by experts.

A Queueing Model for Tiered Inspection Lines in Airports

title: A Queueing Model for Tiered Inspection Lines in Airports abstract: This paper proposes a tiered inspection system for airport security, wherein passengers are divided into three classes based on historical security records. A two-dimensional Markov process and a Markov modulated Poisson process (MMPP) queue were used in the formu- lation of the security inspection system. Simulated annealing was then used to obtain near- optimum solution for the model. The efficacy of the proposed model was evaluated using the arrival data of passengers at Taoyuan International Airport and other two international airports. A comparison with two conventional queueing models with regard to the average waiting time demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed security inspection system in enhancing service efficiency and boosting the level of security.

Discovering Time-Interval Sequential Patterns by a Pattern Growth Approach with Confidence Constraints

title: Discovering Time-Interval Sequential Patterns by a Pattern Growth Approach with Confidence Constraints abstract: Sequential pattern mining is to discover frequent sequential patterns in a sequence database. The technique is applied to fields such as web click-stream mining, failure forecast, and traf- fic analysis. Conventional sequential pattern-mining approaches generally focus only the orders of items; however, the time interval between two consecutive events can be a valuable information when the time of the occurrence of an event is concerned. This study extends the concept of the well-known pattern growth approach, PrefixSpan algorithm, to propose a novel sequential pattern mining approach for sequential patterns with time intervals. Unlike the other time-interval sequential pattern-mining algorithms, the approach concerns the time for the next event to occur more than the timing information with its precedent events. To obtain a more reliable sequential pattern, a new measure of the confidence of a sequential pattern is defined. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach.

A Generalized PROMETHEE III with Risk Preferences on Losses and Gains

title: A Generalized PROMETHEE III with Risk Preferences on Losses and Gains abstract: This study aims to generalize the Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) III model by introducing risk preferences of decision makers. The risk preferences are expressed by an S-shaped value function with gain and loss parts. This study then illustrates an environmental evaluation of waste treatment plants for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in Taiwan. Sensitivity analysis and the rank test demonstrate that the proposed model is rather stable. The PROMETHEE methods have been involved in various applications, especially in environmental management. One core process of PROMETHEE is to establish a preference difference function with two types of thresholds. The range of the slope lines of the linear preference is within the interval of [0, 1]. Working from the concept of the prospect theory, we extend its S-shaped function to the interval range of [−1, 1] so as to express risk preferences that occur in two quadrants. This research assesses a project on 15 local WEEE treatment plants to promote their recycling capability and technology competitiveness. According to the five aspects, the performance measures of the plants are obtained from a field study. The proposed model has an advantage on rank invariance by changing the thresholds in our case with sensitivity analysis demonstrating the robustness of the model. The generalized PROMETHEE III with risk preferences indeed provides an extension for making a decision in an uncertain environment.

Multiple Criteria Analysis of the Airport Terminal Effectiveness by Multi-objective Optimization and Simulation

title: Multiple Criteria Analysis of the Airport Terminal Effectiveness by Multi-objective Optimization and Simulation abstract: A rational approach to terminal airport management is not a trivial task due to relatively complex interactions between passengers and terminal infrastructure. Such infrastructure may be represented or modelled as a network of service nodes. To make a decision about such a network structure, one has to take into account not only the cost of terminal infrastructure, but also a set of quality indicators depicting passenger service level. Such decision problems may be formulated in the multiple criteria setting. We propose a bi-criteria decision making problem with a discrete-event simulation model of a terminal airport as a base model. The simulation model is used to evaluate a finite set of configurations representing a network of service nodes. To point out the most preferred Pareto optimal configuration, we propose to use an interactive decision making method to navigate Pareto optimal solutions with so-called vectors of concessions and reference points as preference carriers. Such versatile decision making scheme may be used to solve practical multiple criteria decision problems with values of criteria functions obtained by simulation runs.

Market Collective Wisdom Discovery for Portfolio Investments

title: Market Collective Wisdom Discovery for Portfolio Investments abstract: The goal of numerous investing strategies, as opposed to hedging strategies, is “to beat the market”, i.e. to secure returns higher than those guaranteed by tracking market indices. In order to achieve this goal, one needs to identify key factors which drive markets and cause security prices to fluctuate. We assume that distinctive key market factors exist, though it is not known how such factors correlate and aggregate, and eventually push a market from one quotation to another. In other words, we purport that at a given time there is the collective wisdom in a market which shapes the collective investment pattern for the future. We engage ourselves to reverse engineer that wisdom. Specifically, we attempt to reverse engineer it from market returns (which we interpret as collective market wisdom embodiment) with the use of the notions of vectors of concessions and compromise half lines, recently introduced into Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis. We illustrate our approach with preliminary calculations for selecting portfolios of international investment funds.

Mathematical Computation of Fuzzy Statistics for Sensory Evaluation

title: Mathematical Computation of Fuzzy Statistics for Sensory Evaluation abstract: Sensory evaluation is an essential need for accepting processed food products having desired quality specifications. Human perceived sensation depends on physiological and physical properties of food as well as demographic characters of consumers. In this paper, a mathematical computation method of fuzzy statistics for sensory evaluation is proposed. It illustrates the quality of sensory variables such as color, texture, flavor, taste etc. of a product with consumers’ demographic characters on a hedonic scale.

Bus Service Model with Rectangular Service Zone under Exponential Relation

title: Bus Service Model with Rectangular Service Zone under Exponential Relation abstract: Most researchers developed bus service models with a rectangular service zone that re- lations among different costs are related by a linear relation. A bus service model had been constructed with a rectangular service zone where costs are synthesized by an exponential relation. An accepted paper had point out that a previous model without capacity constraint is unreasonable. This paper examines another model with capacity constraint to show that previous formulated optimal solution contains questionable findings and then we provide our solution approach. The key feature of our paper is to point out that using the route width as a continuous variable will derive unreasonable results. Our improved approach is to use the partition number for the zone width as a discrete variable. A numerical example is provided to illustrate our proposed approach.

Smartphone Market Analysis Using Dynamic Multi-Criteria Decision Methods

title: Smartphone Market Analysis Using Dynamic Multi-Criteria Decision Methods abstract: The iPhone introduced an innovative multi-touch interface to satisfy customers’ attractive requirements. Thereafter, most smartphone manufacturers begin to mimic this innovation in their new generation products for a dramatically increasing demand market. Although the smartphone market includes many types and functions of products, there are no smart- phone selection methods to support customers to select an effective smartphone. In order to cope with such a problem, this paper proposes a multi-criteria selection method to evaluate operating systems and hardware and software specifications using AHP and SMART-ROC, respectively. For illustration, this paper uses the proposed methods to analyze the customer utility and benefit-cost of 24 popular smartphones in the market. The results show that the most popular smartphone does not have the best cost-benefit. This paper suggests customers select smartphones by referring to the cost-benefit approach except when they are looking for a communications product for a special purpose.

A Hybrid Approach for Knowledge Recommendation

title: A Hybrid Approach for Knowledge Recommendation abstract: Knowledge sharing is critical to knowledge management as it enables employees to share their knowledge. However, knowledge searching is a very time-consuming work. Additionally, in the context of an unsolved puzzle or unknown task, users typically have to determine the knowledge for which they will search. Therefore, knowledge management platforms for enterprises should have knowledge recommendation functionality. Hybrid recommendation systems (RS) have been developed to overcome, or at least to mitigate, the limitations of collaborative filtering. Because Genetic Algorithm (GA) is good at searching, it can cluster data according to similarities. However, the increase in the amount of data and nformation reduces the performance of a GA, thereby increasing cost of finding a solution. This work applies a novel method for incorporating a GA and rough set theory into clustering. In this paper, this work presents a hybrid knowledge recommendation model, which has a two-phase model for clustering and recommending. Approach implementation is demonstrated, as are its effectiveness and efficiency.

Efficient Method for Testing the Batch-Processing Process Yield

title: Efficient Method for Testing the Batch-Processing Process Yield abstract: Batch manufacturing processes have been widely used in various manufacturing processes, such as wafer fabrication, IC fabrication, and gridline printing process in the solar battery fabrication. In a batch manufacturing process, products are produced batch-by-batch. Thus, total process variations are generally divided into batch-by-batch variation and within-batch variation. The main purpose of this study is to provide an efficient method for testing the batch-processing process yield. Base on the one-way random effect model, the generalized pivotal quantity is utilized to establish the generalized confidence interval for assessing the process yield index. By simulations, the proposed method shows that its empirical coverage probability is not affected by the batch effect, and is still close the nominal coverage probability as the batch size increases.

DYNAMICS OF THE PREDATOR-PREY MODELS ON THE TWO-PATCH FRAGMENTED HABITAT WITH DISPERSAL

title: DYNAMICS OF THE PREDATOR-PREY MODELS ON THE TWO-PATCH FRAGMENTED HABITAT WITH DISPERSAL abstract: In this work, we consider the population-dispersal dynamics for predator-prey interactions in a two-patch environment. On each fragmented patch, there is a two-species predator-prey ecological system. It is assumed that the predator species are mobile. The existence and local dynamics of boundary equilibria and interior equilibria with respect to parameters are completely classified. Moreover, global extinction results are established analytically. In particular, the phenomenon of over-exploitation is also found in these discrete patches models. Finally, some biological interpretations are discussed.

REGIME SHIFT IN A PHYTOPLANKTON–PHOSPHORUS MODEL WITH VERTICAL STRUCTURE AND SEASONALITY

title: REGIME SHIFT IN A PHYTOPLANKTON–PHOSPHORUS MODEL WITH VERTICAL STRUCTURE AND SEASONALITY abstract: Many ecological systems are influenced by positive feedbacks between organisms and abiotic environments, which generates multiple stable equilibria of a mathematical model with a hysteresis structure. In addition, discontinuous shifts of system at equilibrium is predicted, which is often called regime shift in ecosystem sciences. This hysteresis structure is unfavorable from environmental management point of view, because the reconstruction of original equilibrium state requests much lower levels of external forcing. Mathematical models proposed in previous works are simple and mathematically tractable ([7],[2]).However, it is difficult to extrapolate from such simple models the occurrence likelihood of regime shift in natural environments since temporally dynamic features in ecology and physico-chemical environments, and spatial dimension are less explored in those models. In this study, we construct a realistic but mathematically tractable model of interaction between phytoplankton and phosphorus, which incorporates (1) 1-dimensional vertical structure of lake ecosystem and (2) seasonal periodic cycle of water mixing. We aim to understand the impact of changes in seasonality in various types of lakes on the occurrence of multiple attractors (periodic solution) and hysteresis structure.

ON THE EVOLUTIONARY STABILITY OF MALE HARASSMENT IN A COERCIVE MATING GAME

title: ON THE EVOLUTIONARY STABILITY OF MALE HARASSMENT IN A COERCIVE MATING GAME abstract: In many animals, males employ coercive mating strategies to help them maximize their expected number of offspring. In such systems, selection will favor behavioral adaptations in females that help them mitigate harassment costs and maximize their reproductive fitness. Previously, Bokides et al. [1] presented a model showing how male harassment strategies can co-evolve with female habitat preferences in a mating game. Their results indicated that if females dispersed freely between habitats where males were present and where males were excluded, selection could favor males who strategically harassed at high (or low) levels, depending on the proximity of their phenotype to a threshold level h∗h∗. This article is a continuation of that work addressing the questions of stability at equilibria where males harass at the threshold level (i.e., h∗h∗). We show these states are both locally and globally asymptotically stable. Further, we argue based on these results that h∗h∗ is an evolutionary stable male harassment level at which females will be ideally distributed to match the resource quality and social environments of their alternative habitats.

A REACTION-DIFFUSION SYSTEM AND ITS SHADOW SYSTEM DESCRIBING HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS

title: A REACTION-DIFFUSION SYSTEM AND ITS SHADOW SYSTEM DESCRIBING HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS abstract: The occurrence of harmful algal blooms (HAB) in ecosystems is a worldwide environmental issue that currently needs to be addressed. An attempt to theoretically understand the mechanism behind the formation of HAB has led to the proposal of a reaction-diffusion model of the Lotka--Volterra type. In particular, a shadow system, as a limiting system of the model in which the diffusion rate tends to infinity, has been proposed to study whether or not stable nonconstant equilibrium solutions of the system exist, because these solutions are mathematically associated with HAB. In this paper, we discuss the convergence property between solutions of the full system and its shadow system from the point of view of an evolutional problem.

LACK OF SYMMETRY IN LINEAR DETERMINACY DUE TO CONVECTIVE EFFECTS IN REACTION-DIFFUSION-CONVECTION PROBLEMS

title: LACK OF SYMMETRY IN LINEAR DETERMINACY DUE TO CONVECTIVE EFFECTS IN REACTION-DIFFUSION-CONVECTION PROBLEMS abstract: This paper is concerned with linear determinacy in monostable reaction- diffusion-convection equations and co-operative systems. We present sufficient conditions for minimal travelling-wave speeds (equivalent to spreading speeds) to equal values obtained from linearisations of the travelling-wave problem about the unstable equilibrium. These conditions involve both reaction and convection terms. We present separate conditions for non-increasing and non-decreasing travelling waves, called `right' and `left' conditions respectively, because of the asymmetry in propagation caused by the convection terms. We also give a necessary condition on the reaction term for the existence of convection terms such that both the right and left conditions can be satisfied simultaneously. Examples show that our sufficient conditions for linear determinacy are not necessary and compare these conditions in the scalar case with alternative conditions observed in Malaguti-Marcelli [15] and Benguria-Depassier-Mendez [3]. We also illustrate, for both an equation and a system, the existence of reaction and (non-trivial) convection terms for which the right and left linear determinacy conditions are simultaneously satisfied. An example is given of an equation which is right but not left linearly determinate.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF TWO STATIONARY SOLUTIONS FOR A FREE BOUNDARY PROBLEM DESCRIBING CELL MOTILITY

title: ON THE EXISTENCE OF TWO STATIONARY SOLUTIONS FOR A FREE BOUNDARY PROBLEM DESCRIBING CELL MOTILITY abstract: This paper is concerned with the existence of stationary solutions for a free boundary problem related to cell motility. In recent years, the author and Ninomiya \cite{monobe_ninomiya} showed that there exist at least two stationary solutions with disk-shaped domains in isotropic boundary conditions. In this paper, it will be shown that there exist exactly two stationary solutions for the free boundary problem under the same boundary conditions. The proof is based on the weak maximum principle and the mean-valued theorem.

THE OPTIMAL DISPERSAL STRATEGY: A TWO-PATCH MODEL WITH TRAVEL LOSS

title: THE OPTIMAL DISPERSAL STRATEGY: A TWO-PATCH MODEL WITH TRAVEL LOSS abstract: The dispersal of organisms plays an important role in determining the dynamics of ecological models. Ecologically, it is of interest in understanding how dispersal strategy influences the distribution of populations. An ideal free distribution (IFD) of populations has been used to predict the distribution of organisms among patches, where a key assumption is to assume that species can move freely between patches without paying any cost. If instead one assumes that there are losses when species moves from one patch to another, then ideal free distributions may not appear. In this note, we examine a two-patch resident-mutant model with travel loss and predict the optimal dispersal strategy for resident and mutant. Moreover, such strategy which produces a non-IFD is evolutionarily stable. Some same and different features of patch models with travel loss are discussed.

ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS OF A MONOSTABLE EQUATION IN PERIODIC MEDIA

title: ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS OF A MONOSTABLE EQUATION IN PERIODIC MEDIA abstract: We consider a multidimensional monostable reaction-diffusion equation whose nonlinearity involves periodic heterogeneity. This serves as a model of invasion for a population facing spatial heterogeneities. As a rescaling parameter tends to zero, we prove the convergence to a limit interface, whose motion is governed by the minimal speed (in each direction) of the underlying pulsating fronts. This dependance of the speed on the (moving) normal direction is in contrast with the homogeneous case and makes the analysis quite involved. Key ingredients are the recent improvement \cite{A-Gil} %[4]of the well-known spreading properties \cite{Wein02}, %[32], \cite{Ber-Ham-02}, %[9],and the solution of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation.

LORENTZ SPACE ESTIMATES FOR VECTOR FIELDS WITH DIVERGENCE AND CURL IN HARDY SPACES

title: LORENTZ SPACE ESTIMATES FOR VECTOR FIELDS WITH DIVERGENCE AND CURL IN HARDY SPACES abstract: In this note, we establish the estimate on the Lorentz space L(3/2,1)L(3/2,1) for vector fields in bounded domains under the assumption that the normal or the tangential component of the vector fields on the boundary vanishes. We prove that the L(3/2,1)L(3/2,1) norm of the vector field can be controlled by the norms of its divergence and curl in the atomic Hardy spaces and the L1L1 norm of the vector field itself.

GROWTH OF SOLUTIONS OF SECOND ORDER LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS WITH EXTREMAL FUNCTIONS FOR DENJOY'S CONJECTURE AS COEFFICIENTS

title: GROWTH OF SOLUTIONS OF SECOND ORDER LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS WITH EXTREMAL FUNCTIONS FOR DENJOY'S CONJECTURE AS COEFFICIENTS abstract: The classical problem of finding conditions on the entire coefficients A(z)A(z) and B(z)B(z) guaranteeing that all nontrivial solutions of f′′+A(z)f′+B(z)f=0f″+A(z)f′+B(z)f=0 are of infinite order is discussed. Some such conditions which involve deficient value, Borel exceptional value and extremal functions for Denjoy's conjecture are obtained.

INEQUALITIES FOR POWER SERIES WITH NONNEGATIVE COEFFICIENTS VIA A REVERSE OF JENSEN INEQUALITY

title: INEQUALITIES FOR POWER SERIES WITH NONNEGATIVE COEFFICIENTS VIA A REVERSE OF JENSEN INEQUALITY abstract: Some inequalities for power series with nonnegative coefficients via a reverse of Jensen inequality obtained by Dragomir & Ionescu in 1994 are given. Applications for some fundamental functions defined by power series are also provided.

ON SOME CLASSES OF INVARIANT SUBMANIFOLDS OF LORENTZIAN PARA-SASAKIAN MANIFOLDS

title: ON SOME CLASSES OF INVARIANT SUBMANIFOLDS OF LORENTZIAN PARA-SASAKIAN MANIFOLDS abstract: The object of the present paper is to study invariant submanifolds of Lorenzian Para-Sasakian manifolds. We consider the recurrent and bi-recurrent invariant submanifolds of Lorentzian para-Sasakian manifolds and pseudo-parallel and generalized Ricci pseudo-parallel invariant submanifolds of Lorentzian para-Sasakian manifolds. Also we search for the conditions Z(X,Y)⋅α=fQ(g,α)Z(X,Y)⋅α=fQ(g,α) and Z(X,Y)⋅α=fQ(S,α)Z(X,Y)⋅α=fQ(S,α) on invariant submanifolds of Lorentzian para-Sasakian manifolds, where ZZ is the concircular curvature tensor. Finally, we construct an example of an invariant submanifold of Lorentzian para Sasakian manifold.

UNIQUENESS OF DIFFERENCE-DIFFERENTIAL POLYNOMIALS OF ENTIRE FUNCTIONS SHARING ONE VALUE

title: UNIQUENESS OF DIFFERENCE-DIFFERENTIAL POLYNOMIALS OF ENTIRE FUNCTIONS SHARING ONE VALUE abstract: In this paper, we study the uniqueness of difference-differential polynomials of entire functions ff and gg sharing one value with counting multiplicity. In this paper we extend and generalize the results of X. Y. Zhang, J. F. Chen and W. C. Lin [17] L. Kai, L. Xin-ling and C. Ting-bin [7] and many others [2, 16].

SECOND DEGREE GENERALIZED JACOBI ITERATION METHOD FOR SOLVING SYSTEM OF LINEAR EQUATIONS

title: SECOND DEGREE GENERALIZED JACOBI ITERATION METHOD FOR SOLVING SYSTEM OF LINEAR EQUATIONS abstract: In this paper, a Second degree generalized Jacobi Iteration method for solving system of linear equations, Ax=bAx=b and discuss about the optimal values a1a1 and b1b1 in terms of spectral radius about for the convergence of SDGJ method of x(n+1)=b1[D−1m(Lm+Um)x(n)+k1m]−a1x(n−1).x(n+1)=b1[Dm−1(Lm+Um)x(n)+k1m]−a1x(n−1). Few numerical examples are considered to show that the effective of the Second degree Generalized Jacobi Iteration method (SDGJ) in comparison with FDJ, FDGJ, SDJ.

JOINS, CORONAS AND THEIR VERTEX-EDGE WIENER POLYNOMIALS

title: JOINS, CORONAS AND THEIR VERTEX-EDGE WIENER POLYNOMIALS abstract: The vertex-edge Wiener index of a simple connected graph GG is defined as the sum of distances between vertices and edges of GG. The vertex-edge Wiener polynomial of GG is a generating function whose first derivative is a q−q−analog of the vertex-edge Wiener index. Two possible distances D1(u,e|G)D1(u,e|G) and D2(u,e|G)D2(u,e|G) between a vertex uu and an edge ee of GG can be considered and corresponding to them, the first and second vertex-edge Wiener indices of GG, and the first and second vertex-edge Wiener polynomials of GG are introduced. In this paper, we study the behavior of these indices and polynomials under the join and corona product of graphs. Results are applied for some classes of graphs such as suspensions, bottlenecks, and thorny graphs.

A USEFUL ORTHONORMAL BASIS ON BI-SLANT SUBMANIFOLDS OF ALMOST HERMITIAN MANIFOLDS

title: A USEFUL ORTHONORMAL BASIS ON BI-SLANT SUBMANIFOLDS OF ALMOST HERMITIAN MANIFOLDS abstract: In this paper, we study bi-slant submanifolds of an almost Hermitian manifold for different cases. We introduce a new orthonormal basis on bi-slant submanifold, semi-slant submanifold and hemi-slant submanifold of an almost Hermitian manifold to compute Chen's main inequalities. We investigate these inequalities for semi-slant submanifolds, hemi-slant submanifolds and slant submanifolds of a generalized complex space form. We obtain some characterizations on such submanifolds of a complex space form.